Waterville, Maine—The University of Maine Fort Kent men’s basketball team lost all three games this weekend, losing two at the Charlie Ryan Classic at Thomas College and on Monday evening to rival UMaine Machias.

At Thomas, on Saturday evening the Bengals offense was faulty as they only scored 57 points against Thomas. The Terriers played a zone defense that stymied the Bengal offense. Thomas’s two star players, Levi Barnes and Tyheem Simon combined for 43 of Thomas’s 63 points. The Bengals trailed 46-35 with 14:27 remaining, but reeled off 13 straight to take a 48-46 lead with under 8 minutes to play. Thomas then ended the game on a 17-9 run over the final 8 minutes as both offenses struggled to score in the second half.

On Sunday, UMFK ran into a team that made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division III tournament last season in Bates College, losing 86-65. UMFK trailed early 15-3, as Bates three 3 point shots early, but the Bengals battled back and closed the first half score to 39-33. Jake Rioux made a three point shot to open the half but things went downhill from there. After a Fletcher Brown three point shot cut the lead to 45-40, Bates reeled off 21 straight points to break the game open. Five Bengal turnovers and 12 missed shots, did them in. Rioux was the only double figure scorer with 11 for UMFK.

On Monday night at Machias, UMFK played a great second half, but ultimately wore themselves out trying to fight back into the game after a very poor first half. UMFK allowed 48 first half points. They hung around by scoring 40 of their own to trail by 8 at halftime after trailing by as many as 14. UMFK turned to their zone defense and held Machias to just 16 points for the first 10 minutes of the second half to lead 68-64. Both teams went back and forth from there with neither team leading by more than four points and the lead changing six times in the final 5:32. The score was 82-81 Machias, when Ben Teer made a 30 footer with the shot clock expiring to eliminate any Bengal hopes.